


Archetype

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle French, a transfer freshman at the elite private school, Storybrooke Prep, finds an unexpected group of students while looking for a place to study. Ouran High School AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Archetype

**Author's Note:**

> A truly silly present for my tumblr-twin, iambicdearie, because we had a deal :)

Belle was just looking for a quiet place to study. Really, that was it. She'd worked her ass off to get into Storybrooke Prep, and the reading list was already ready to swallow her whole. She wasn't going to fall behind in her first week, just because home was too cluttered and small to work as a study space, and the libraries were too loud and distracting.  She found the pink door on the fifth floor, and sighed with relief as she creaked it open and saw only a small group of young men in quiet conversation, and another sat to the side, working diligently over a stack of papers. 

She was fascinated, though, by the room itself. It was larger than any of the other study rooms, and more lavishly decorated, with ornaments and paintings lining the walls, and more expensive-looking furnishings than anywhere else as well. It was completely beautiful, and she admired the decorator’s good taste.

She was so well distracted, in fact, that her natural clumsiness took hold. She slipped on a discarded sheet of paper on the floor, her foot skidding, and knocked a table as she fell.

A vase, filled with red roses and decorated in gold, spun and - to her horror - fell and smashed on the ground.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry!” she cried, bending to scoop up the pieces. Another student, a boy with dark eyes and neatly combed, shoulder-length dark hair, knelt to help her with her task.

“Not a problem, I assure you.” He smiled, a smile both kind and a little unnerving, and she nodded nervously. “Get a seat, I’ll finish here.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice startled and mousey, to her disgust, and she practically scurried away. She slipped into a seat, got out her notebook and textbooks, and started to work with a happy little sigh.

She worked a good fifteen minutes before she had any contact with anyone else.  "Excuse me?" that same voice, accented - Scottish, she thought - and low, broke her concentration, and she looked up to see that the boys had stopped talking and were looking at her. However, the voice had come from the boy who had helped her, who now sat a few desks down with his papers.  

"Yes?"  

"Are you by any chance the new student we have heard tell of?" The boy asked, and she didn't know how to respond. He didn't look unkind, but neither did he look friendly or nice. He was slim, slight, with dark, tobacco-brown eyes. He had to be at least three or four years older than her, a senior surely, and his gaze was far too intense for her liking. 

 "Um, yes?" She said, a little uncertainly, because Storybrooke Prep was a large school and surely one new student could not be noticed, let alone recognised, by complete strangers.  

"Really?" One of the other boys, tall and broad where the first was small and lean, gave her a genuinely friendly grin, "Belle French, right?"  

"Yes..." this was just creepy, now, they knew her name? “I’m sorry, have we met?”

“We have third period chem together,” a smaller boy beside him said, and Belle frowned, trying to place his face. His smile was friendly, bright, almost girlishly pretty, but he wore a boy’s uniform, “I’m Snow Blanchard?”

“Oh, yes!” Belle snapped her fingers, the memory returning, “Of course, sorry!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Snow smiled, “You must be really busy, catching up and everything?”

“Yeah, this school is so difficult,” Belle nodded, “It’s taking forever to just get through all the work.”

“Well then you must have little time to come here to us, correct?” the other boy, the quiet one with the Scottish accent, cut across their chatter. Snow gave him a look.

“Oh, hush Rum,” he chided, good-naturedly. He turned back to Belle, “Don’t mind him, he’s grumpy when… well, when people breathe around him I suppose.”

She laughed, and Belle, despite the other boy glaring daggers at them both, laughed too.

“Don’t make her laugh to hard, Rum,” a taller boy, who’d been sat behind them all and watching, put a hand on Snows shoulder. “She’ll get bruises.”

She?

Belle glanced from Rum to his taller friend to Snow and back again in confusion, before Snow smiled apologetically and placed a hand over hers. “I’m sorry, David forgets sometimes that newbies don’t know.”

“Know what?” Belle’s usually quick mind had been thrown off, she thought, by this whole place. It just felt strange, like being Alice down the rabbit hole, even though reason said that this was just any other classroom, with any other group of young men studying.

“That I’ve been avoiding wearing correct uniform for a year and a half now,” she said. And yes, now that Belle looked, she wondered how she ever could have thought Snow was a boy. “That dress this school makes girls wear… it just gets in the way. And Rum won’t let me spend time with David without paying a fairly high price,” she shot an accusing glare to the boy in question, who smiled back blandly, “unless I’m a member.”

“A member?” Belle frowned, “What club in this day and age doesn’t allow female members?”

Snow laughed, “Oh, honey, you are new aren’t you?”

Belle was becoming annoyed now, “What’s going on, what is this place?”

“Welcome,” Rum stood and spread his arms wide, bowing low at the waist, “to the Storybrooke High School Host Club.”

Belle gaped at the three of them, stunned. They were all smiling, Rum deceptively bland, but she could see the mockery behind it; Snow almost apologetic; David friendly and innocent, as if he didn’t get the joke.

“H- Host Club?” Belle took a step back, and then another, wondering what kind of madness she’d stumbled into.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Snow said, “really it’s more like a club room. We just make nice conversation and serve tea and flirt a bit, nothing more.”

“Oh, okay,” Belle nodded, still processing, head reeling. She went to a school where boys - and one girl, dressed as a boy, and she now realised that that must be a ruse to fool the female students - made money by idly flirting with girls in a club room. A school with exclusive club rooms. Her last school had had one common room for seniors, and everyone else had the corridors and cafeteria. 

She took one more step back, and collided with a warm, solid wall. “Ah, she found our whorehouse, then?”

The wall was a human being, another tall boy, and by the feel of it - and to Belle’s horror - a boy with his shirt off. She turned slowly around, and she was right: there was someone stood right behind her. He was tall, with wild brown hair and a manic smile, and while she’d thought he was entirely topless he actually wore a very long dark frock coat.

Then something clicked, “…she?”

“Belle, right? The new arrival.”

Belle spun around, every face smiling. Snow was warm where David was open and the boy in front of her manic. And all expectant. “What the hell is going on?”

Snow sighed, her shoulders sagging, “We’re all scholarship students; we do this to make money to keep up with our peers. It’s almost a Storybrooke Prep tradition, now. All of us do it. Even Rum, who must have more money than the rest of the school put together by now.”

“So?”

“So, you know I’m a girl: no one else in this school outside this room knows that. You’re one of us.”

Rum finally spoke up, clearing his throat so that Belle’s incredulous gaze snapped from Snow’s warm eyes to his cooler ones. “Of course, not all hardship students are invited. But we believe that your bookish qualities, the charm Snow says she witnesses in classes when you’re dealing with difficult peers and teachers, and your good looks…” he cleared his throat again, awkwardly, although he seemed the picture of ease. “You’d be a welcome addition, Miss French.”

“Um, thanks? I suppose?” she shook her head again: this was all far too confusing, completely mental, and she needed to be someplace that made sense. “But... no thanks. Can I leave now?”

“Of course,” Rum smiled, and held an arm out toward the door, “by all means. Refund the price of the vase and you’re free to go.”

“The… vase?” she asked, with dawning horror.

“Indeed,” his smile was wolfish, “a stroke of luck, that, considering David’s slip of the tongue. If you have the thousand dollars together that the item was worth, then repay it and go in peace. Otherwise, I’d reconsider our offer.”

She swallowed, hard, and almost jumped out of her skin when the shirtless boy spoke again.

“Take a seat, rabbit, and Snow’ll get you a uniform.”

She nodded, shakily, and sank into the nearest seat.

“Now,” the boy continued, “how does this work for the ball? Anyone?”

“Very nice, Jefferson,” Snow said, absently, and Belle watched her disappear into a side room. She seemed nicer than the others - well, except David, who seemed sweet and friendly if not too bright - but this was all creeping Belle out.

“I thought so,” he grinned, pleased, and looked to David, “what about you? Sexy Mad Hatter working?”

“You always show too much flesh,” David shook his head, “you need to be a little more…”

“Mysterious,” Belle supplied, a little numbly.

David grinned and pointed at her, “Exactly.”

“Oh yes,” Rum drawled, “because playing Prince Charming is just filled with mystery and intrigue.”

“Prince Charming?” Belle asked.

“His archetype,” Rum explained. “We all have one, it’s how we keep a balance. And that, my dear, is how you come in.”

“Right, of course. Silly of me to expect sense.”

He gave her a smirk, more approving than she’d expected. “Quite.” He took a deep breath, and looked about, “So David here is Prince Charming, dashing and noble, good hearted. Non threatening. Popular with girls who feel like princesses and have little between the ears. Or who are used to being messed about and want some stability.”

David grinned, “And Snow.”

“As I said, not much between the ears.”

“Heard that!” Snow called from the store room, “and I make your tea so I’d watch it buster!”

“Dear Snow is the Fair type,” Rum continued, grinning, “effeminate but capable and responsible. The feminine foil to David’s Prince Charming.” He snickered, “half our clientele believes they’re secretly in love, but it’s forbidden because they’re both supposedly heterosexual.”

“What they don’t know can’t hurt them,” Snow beamed, returning with a pile of green cloth in her arms, a boy’s uniform. “There you go. With any luck, you won’t need bindings to make it look authentic. Lucky thing.”

Belle wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or not, she just nodded dumbly.

“I think you’re scaring her, Rum,” Snow said, concerned.

“Easily frightened, then,” Jefferson said, negligently. He made a theatrical flourish as he came around in front of her, and took a bow. “The manic rock star, at your service.”

Rum rolled his eyes, “Code for ‘irresponsible in leather trousers’.”

Jefferson winked at Belle, “Well put. He, of course, is the grumpy, misanthropic type. Some girls go for that, I guess.”

“They do?” Belle blinked up at him, then glanced between them all, “so the idea is that two are nice, one’s batshit insane and one is actively mean?”

“And one is sweet, innocent, doesn’t understand at all what is happening and just wants to do his homework,” Jefferson glanced between Belle, her books, and the uniform in her lap. “Get the picture?”

“This… I can earn money this way?” Belle asked, slowly. “That’s what it’s for?”

“We’re not doing it for the fun of it, although it is more fun than you’d expect,” Snow nodded. “It’s a way of leveling the playing field: Regina Mills and her kind have their money from their parents. We have them spend it here and in turn don’t look like paupers to the rest of the school.”

“Of course,” Rum cut in, “half of your earnings would go back to us, until the vase is repaid. You will have to repay me for that, either way, Belle.”

“But the other half you could spend as you choose,” David added, as if trying to soften the blow. “It’s really helpful when the school decides to have big trips and events. Means you don’t get left out.”

“Are you in?” Jefferson pressed, leaning in a little closer, into Belle’s personal space, with that manic grin of his. “Do we have a deal, as our esteemed leader would say?”

Belle sighed, and shook her head, trying to think. In truth, it didn’t sound like a bad idea. Some money to spend would lighten the burden on her father, and god knew she was sick of being the only girl in school wearing a hand-me-down approximation of the uniform. 

All it would take would be a slight name change and a wig.

“I guess,” she shrugged, “it sounds like a terrible idea, but why not?”


End file.
